The current issue of St. John's Journal of Catholic Legal Studies is now available online. As part of Amy Uelman's and my efforts to foster collaboration between New York City's two Catholic law schools in promoting Catholic thought, the issue includes papers from the series on Catholics and the Death Penalty held at Fordham Law School during the 2004-05 academic year. The issue can be accessed here.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Journal of Catholic Legal Studies
Monday, August 28, 2006
More on Georgetown
Rick's follow-up to Rob's post on this subject assumes that similar policies are in place regarding outside Catholic ministries and also quotes the First Things article suggesting that the decision was made in the name of the Catholic tradition of Georgetown.
As to the first, it appears that the change in policy is one that affects only the affiliated Protestant ministries operating at Georgetown, not any Catholic ones. (Having said that, I have no first-hand knowledge of what, if any outside Catholic ministries operate at Georgetown.)
As to the second, there is no suggestion in the letter sent to the affiliated Protestant ministires announcing the policy that the decision had anything to do with adherence to Catholic tradition; it appears to be more an issue of how Protesant Ministry will be conducted at the University. Scrolling to the bottom of the attached link will give you a link to a pdf file with a copy of the letter.
The linked article suggests that the decision is about "a desire in the Protestant Chaplaincy to build the ministry from within Georgetown and its Protestant student leaders rather than rely on outside groups or fellowships.” There may be more to it than that, but whatever that is does not appear to be about Catholic mission.
Thursday, August 3, 2006
Lemmon's argument for all-male priesthood.
Lisa's post quotes from an Logos article by Lemmons explaining that the masculinity of Christ is necessary, not for his humanitarian mission, but for his gender mission of restoring heterosexual unity. I don't have access to the entire piece, but confess that the quoted portion leaves me puzzled. I must be missing something, but even if original sin "deeply affected the unity of man and women," it is not clear to me why Christ had to be male to restore that unity. Why is it that "[t]he masculinity of Christ is crucial to his mission of remedying the effect of original sin"?
Of course a separate issue is: even if masculinity was crucial to Christ's mission, there is still a leap to saying that masculinity is crucial to a priest's role.
Monday, April 24, 2006
Keeping Holy the Sabbath
Employee believes in the importance of the Sabbath and the biblical requirement that all work cease on that day. When interviewed for his job as a Home Depot sales associate in Henrietta, NY, he made his supervisors aware that he could not work on Sundays, and was hired. A year later, a new supervisor arrived in the Henrietts store and told the employee he must work on Sunday. He refused. She offered him a late shift so he could attend services, but he said that violated the Sabbath. Was the offer of a late shift a reasonable accomodation for religious discrimination?
A federal judge in the Western District of New York ruled yes. However, the Second Circuit reversed, finding that the trial judge had incorrctly concluded that an offer to require the worker to work only Sunday afternoons and evenings was a sufficient accomodation for religious beliefs. The Court cited an earlier Sixth CIrcuit ruling that an employer does not fulfill its obligation when it accomodates one religious objection (need to attend religious services) but not another (not working on the Sabbath). The Second Circuit did suggest that the store's offer of part-time employment (which the employee rejected because of his economic need to work full-time) or offering the possibility the employee could change shifts with his co-workers from week to week, might be sufficient accomodation under Title VII and remanded to the district court for determination of these issues. In my view, it is hard to see how either of those constitutes a sufficient accomodation. (The case is Baker v. The Home Depot, 2006 U.S. App. LEXIS 9891.)
Public University Funding of Religious Student Groups
A couple of days ago, Rick posted a report of a dipute in California over funding the activities of a religious student organization that selected members or officers on the basis of religious and secual orientation. To expand the subject a bit: the Associated Press reported the other day about a controversy over whether the University of Wisconsin-Madison should allow a Catholic student group to use student fees for religious purposes. The chancellor takes the position that allowing the student group to use any university funding for religious purposes (e.g. printing Lenten booklets) would violate the First Amendment. The Cathlic group (which "serves the university's estimated 12,000 Catholic students, faculty and staff") argues that scholls must disburse funds without regard to ideology or viewpoint and that withholding funds would amount to discrimination on the basis of religion.
I'm not a Constitutionl Law scholar and would be interested in hearing anyone's view on the arguments being made here.
Catholic Law Reviews
Rick yesterday posted the comment of a MOJ reader regarding the potential role of law reviews at Catholic law schools and asked for our thoughts.
I think it is fair to say that the primary journals of most Catholic law schools (i.e., the school's "law review" or "law journal" vs. its secondary, often specialized journals) do not see themselves as any different from the primary journals of non-Catholic law schools. That is, they seek to publish the best articles they can (or, at least, articles by the most prominent legal scholars who will publish with them), regardless of subject matter. I did a quick, admittedly non-exhaustive, check of the webpages of the primary journals of a number of Catholic law schools and their statements of their journal's philosophy/aim reads no differently from that of non-Catholic law schools. One notable exception (there may be others - I just did a random check of a number of schools) is the University of St. Thomas Law Journal, whose web page states that the journal seeks to "embod[y] the school's unique mission by publishing excellent legal scholarship that inspires ethical and moral decision-making with an emphasis on social justice."
Having said that, it is the case that a number of Catholic law schools do have journals specifically devoted to advancing Catholic legal thought, e.g. St. John's Journal of Catholic Legal Studies and Villanova's Journal of Catholic Social Thought. I agree with the author of the post that these, and other journals like then, fill an important role.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Change vs. Growth
I have greatly appreciated the discussion of the past several days initiated by Eduardo's posting on "Authority and Reason." In a recent posting, Robert Araujo pickes up Mark's observation about whether the Magisterium changes, evolves or grows. Robert takes the position that the Church "grows," using the example of the embryonic stem cell debate, observing that there used to be no Church authority on the issue (becuase there was no issue) but now there is such authority.
I'm not sure the stem cell issue is a good example on this point. It is easy to speak of "growth" when dealing with a new issue on which there was no prior Church position. It is much harder to demonstrate to the satisfaction of many people that recent Church statements on, e.g., capital punishment, represent "growth" rather than "change." I sometimes worry that insistence that the Magisterium does not change makes the Church's voice less effective in many quarters.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
More on John Paul II's Legacy
Thanks to both Rob Vischer and Michael Perry for their postings (here and here) on our conference the past two days on the Jurisprudential Legacy of Pope John Paul II. I don't have time this morning to do a full run down of yesterdays three panels (and hope that one or more the MOJ participants will add some thoughts about those). But I want to at least briefly mention some of the points raised in John Allen's keynote address (which will be included in the issue of the St. John's Journal of Catholic Legal Studies which publishes the papers from the confernce).
In his talk, Allen identified five areas of law and politics where he felt John Paul II's impact was felt most keenly, many of which we have debated here on Mirror of Justice: (1) the fallacy of legal positivism; (2) the intersection between faith and public policy; (3) human rights; (4) death penalty; and (5) international law and the use of force. He also identified three open questions that the Catholic Church still has to come to terms with under the papacy of Benedict XVI: (1) Catholics and public life (referencing the controversy in the last election over refusing Eucharist to certain politicians); (2) just was vs. humanitarian intervention; and (3) Catholic institutions under civil law (referencing the recent question regarding Catholic Charities ability to deny placing children for adoption with same-sex couples). My brief listing does not do justice to his talk, which was engaging, inspiring, and, at times, quite amusing (as he described his trips to some of the places John Paul II visited). But is hopefully gives you a little taste of what we experienced and we will doubtless be engaging on many of these issues in more detail both in the blogosphere and in other conferences.
Wednesday, March 1, 2006
Jurisprudential Legacy of Pope John Paul II
I've mentioned before the upcoming (March 23-24) conference sponsored by St. John's University School of Law on the Jurisprudential Legacy of Pope John Paul II. A number of MOJ'ers will be participating as paper presenters or commentators. The full conference brochure and schedule is linked here.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
When Life Begins
Robert George, Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton, had this to say to my query to Rick regarding Indiana's proposed statute and the question of when life begins:
"I am writing in connection with your posting on the Mirror of Justice website about the basis or bases for the belief that the life of a human being begins at fertilization. You say that you think that there is a basis in science sufficient to support the belief, but that you also accept it on religious grounds. I don't know about other religious traditions, but the teaching of Catholicism that the life of a human being begins at fertilization is itself based on the science. So far as I know, the Church proposes no independent religious basis for the belief. Indeed, the Church did not teach that the life of a human being begins at fertilization (though it has always taught that direct abortion is gravely wrong even in the earliest stages of pregnancy) until modern embryology and human developmental biology established that with the successful union of gametes substantial change occurs, causing the gametes to cease to exist as their constituent DNA molecules enter into the production of a new and complete human organism that (unlike the gametes) is genetically and functionally distinct from the organisms (i.e., the parents) whose gametes united to produce this result. In other words, the Church began to teach what it now teaches about the status of the newly conceived human being when science made clear that from the zygote and blastula stages forward the product of fertilization is a living individual member of the species Homo sapiens.
"None of this is to deny that any particular believer or any religious tradition other than Catholicism may believe or teach that the life of a human being begins at fertilization (or at any other point) as a matter of revealed truth. (As I say, I don't know about the teachings of traditions other than Catholicism.) Of course, anyone or any tradition that believes or teaches on religious grounds that the life of a human being begins either before fertilization or at some point in gestation (e.g., at implantation, or viability, or birth, or after birth when the child begins to breathe or becomes self-aware) will have a religious teaching that is contradicted by facts established by science."
My comment back to Prof. George was that although I am now a Catholic and was
raised one, I also spent a significant number of years as a Buddhist and that my own acceptance of life beginning at conception dates back to that time period. Although it may in fact be grounded in science, the Buddhist belief was never expressed as being grounded in science. If, in fact, religious beliefs regarding when life begins are grounded in science, then, as Rick originally posited - the statement about when life begins is scientific. But people don't always speak in those terms, which is why I raised he question whether it is imcumbent upon the legislature to ground the statute in science rather than in terms of belief (even if science underlies the belief).
raised one, I also spent a significant number of years as a Buddhist and that my own acceptance of life beginning at conception dates back to that time period. Although it may in fact be grounded in science, the Buddhist belief was never expressed as being grounded in science. If, in fact, religious beliefs regarding when life begins are grounded in science, then, as Rick originally posited - the statement about when life begins is scientific. But people don't always speak in those terms, which is why I raised he question whether it is imcumbent upon the legislature to ground the statute in science rather than in terms of belief (even if science underlies the belief).
Prof. George continues:
"My own view (I am a Catholic) is that religion has an important role to play in reinforcing (and for some people grounding) our commitment as individuals and as a polity to the proposition that every human being has a profound and inherent dignity and a right to life. When it comes to determining who is a human being, however, I think that legislative determinations should be made strictly on the basis of the best scientific evidence. In debates about abortion and research involving the destruction of human embryos, the key question is "When does the life of a new human being begin?" Whatever different indivuals may think and different religions may teach about that, the facts as established by scientific inquiry, understanding, and judgment are clear. As you said in your posting, the genetic and other scientific evidence is sufficient to support the claim."
After a further exchange, he added the following clarification:
"On re-reading it, I notice that what I say in the fifth sentence of the
first paragraph might be a little puzzling. After noting that the
Church did not teach what it now teaches about the status of the newly
conceived human embryo until after science had established the fact of
substantial change occuring at fertilization, I go on in the remainder
of the sentence to give the up-to-date description of that change,
including a reference to DNA. Perhaps it goes without saying that the
Church did not have to wait until after the discovery of DNA to know on
the basis of the embryological facts that began to emerge with the
discovery of the ovum that substantial change occurs at fertilization."
first paragraph might be a little puzzling. After noting that the
Church did not teach what it now teaches about the status of the newly
conceived human embryo until after science had established the fact of
substantial change occuring at fertilization, I go on in the remainder
of the sentence to give the up-to-date description of that change,
including a reference to DNA. Perhaps it goes without saying that the
Church did not have to wait until after the discovery of DNA to know on
the basis of the embryological facts that began to emerge with the
discovery of the ovum that substantial change occurs at fertilization."
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